The preparation of racemic 1-(2-pyridyl)-2-cyclohexylethyl amine is described by P. L. Pickard and T. L. Tolbert, (Journal of Organic Chemistry 26, 4886, 1961) in a method which utilizes 2-cyanopyridine and an organometallic reagent such as cyclohexylmethylmagnesium bromide to form a kerimine intermediate which is reduced in situ. This procedure uses a Grignard reaction and anhydrous solvents. In an alternate process alkylation using a phase transfer catalyst has been described by J. March in "Advanced Organic Chemistry" Third Edition, 417, (1985). For other examples, see Fraser, Banville and Dhawan, J. A. C. S., 100, 7999, (1978); Corey and Enders, Chem. Ber. 111, 1337, (1978) and Asai, Aoyana and Shirori, Synthesis 811, (1980). In addition, Y. Wang et at. teach a process for preparing substituted-2-pyridyl methyl amines by condensing 2-pyridylamine with benzaldehyde followed by alkylation with an alkyl halide in the presence of tetrabutylammonium bromide (Synthetic Communications, 22(2), 265-269,1992). Each of these processes produce racemic mixtures of pyridyl cyclohexylalkylamine. However, efficient methods for separating the mixtures to recover the desired isomer have not been previously available. U.S. Pat. No. 5,296,486 describes the separation of racemic 1-(2-pyridyl)-2-cyclohexylethylamine via a diastereomeric amide. This procedure requires three extra steps and involves column chromatography which makes the method expensive in large scale production.